We are the 53%

Inspirational way of being

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”

 

-John Quincy Adams

Looking for a few good men

The media fails to present young men with honorable role models and instead suggests that they're superfluous--when now is the time that they're needed more than ever before! With all of the single-parent homes, abuse, and familial instability, we need responsible, committed, loving dads more than ever.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/primetimes-looming-male-identity-crisis/244692/#slide1

Samizdat has engaged with similar topics before featuring a number of posts about men's need to be needed, the rise of drifting boys, and misandry.

Guiding lights

"Are my guiding principles healthy and robust? On this hangs everything."

-Marcus Aurelius

Conviction

"If it is good to say or do something, then it is even better to be criticized for having said or done it."

-Marcus Aurelius

Family: The Fundamental Unit of Society

"Families create a crucial organizational level between the individual and the massive structures of government and business conglomerate. The family is the "little platoon" that gives each individual a sense of personal meaning for his or her life. Other than teaching us our basic citizenship duties, it is not the place of government of the marketplace to tell us what our most personal lie purposes should be. Rather, government and business are supposed to maintain the political and economic stability that will allow each of us to pursue the life purpose we draw from such meaning-generating sources as religion and family life.

So we have historically given the family the immensely important power of deciding which personal values children should learn. We would never allow state control over childrearing, as was a characteristic of Soviet communism, because that control destroys the diversity and range of free choice that democracy is designed to protect.

Without the decentralized authority that lets families and churches play this mediating role between individuals and society's megastructures, we are vulnerable to totalitarianism, which imposes on society one comprehensive order of meaning. Even if our government remains democratic, however, the nation's family and religious structures can grow weak, as they are now becoming. When that happens, people wander in search of personal purpose, often falling prey to the meaningless addictions of materialism and pleasure-seeking."

-Bruce C. Hafen
"Covenant Hearts," pp. 246-247

Measure of a Man

"Bear in mind that the measure of a man is the worth of the things he cares about."

Marcus Aurelius

Wisdom in intervention

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."

-Master Ugui

from the movie "Kung Fu Panda"

Public servants

"Public business must always be done by somebody...If wise men decline, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not." 

-John Adams

Efficiency and preparation

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

-Abraham Lincoln

The Noblest Labor

"It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses."

-Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish Statesman and UN official

Religion is the foundation of democracy and prosperity

http://www.mormonperspectives.com/2011/02/08/religion-is-the-foundation-of-democracy-and-prosperity/

A post by Clayton Christensen

Politics and War

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.


John Adams

1 hour to save the world

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, if you have an hour to save the world, spend 55 minutes of it understanding the problem and five minutes of it trying to solve it.

It is the soldier

It is the soldier, not the reporter,
who has given us freedom of the press. 
It is the soldier, not the poet, 
who has given us freedom of speech. 


It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, 
who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. 
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, 
who has given us the right to a fair trial. 


It is the soldier 
who salutes the flag, 
who serves under the flag, 
and whose coffin is draped by the flag, 
who allows the protester to burn the flag. 


-Father Dennis Edward O'Brian

Art Value

"The value of an artwork is rooted in assumptions about the human performance underlying its creation."

-Denis Dutton